CIOs need to focus on big data innovation, analyst claims

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Business leaders need to do more than simply invest in technology to fully realise the value of big data, it has been claimed.

Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner, said big data requires an enterprise to embrace innovation on two levels - both in terms of the way IT is used and also the way information is analysed.

He said there are both technology and process and change management challenges to be overcome by chief information officers as they look to realise the true value of data.

Gartner believes businesses need time to trust new data sources and new analytics, and enterprises should start small with pilots that allow full transparency on the data, the analytics and the resulting insight.

Mr LeHong said CIOs may feel more comfortable starting with internal data sources, because the thinking is that much of it is already being managed by IT.

"However, in many cases, these internal data sources are not controlled by IT at all," he noted.

"For example, call centre recordings, security camera footage and operational data from manufacturing equipment all represent potential internal sources of data to investigate, but they are usually not under the control of IT."